Wednesday, 25 January 2017

" In the experience of the present author, the notions of the imposter and of pseudologia fantastica might well be expanded to include greater emphasis on the question of multiple personalities and multiple personality disorder. This insight derives from my own observation over a number of years of a charismatic political leader with strong tendencies toward the creation of a personality cult, somewhat on the model of Joseph Smith.

The individual in question is Lyndon H. LaRouche.

In the 1960s and 1970s, LaRouche was remarkable for his intelligence overview and programmatic orientation, which tended more and more to be overshadowed by a crude demand for adulation and unquestioning obedience, precisely along the lines of a personality cult. Over time, one got the impression that LaRouche had several distinct personalities –one perceptive and insightful, one raging, narcissistic, and vindictive, and yet another whimsical and nostalgic.

Needless to say, it was the insistent and vindictive personality which employed the other selves to recruit a following and then impose on them the yoke of his personality cult. In this process, he exhibited moments of charismatic rhetorical appeal, and other moments of the most primitive infantilism. He also neglected the most elementary precautions. On the one hand, he launched campaigns of exposure and denunciation against Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Rockefeller, and other public figures of some power, while at the same time he refused to submit yearly federal income tax returns. It was this latter failing which helped to put him in jail for five years.

On at least one known occasion, LaRouche reportedly boasted of his multiple personalities, while claiming that he had the ability to shift at will from one personality to another, according to his own psychological needs. LaRouche called this his

“Multiple Personality Order.”

The parallels of this syndrome to the case of Joseph Smith are evident. "

" In her discussion of the impostor, Phyllis Greenacre also cites the case of Titus Oates (1649-1705), who was the great protagonist of the fictitious“Popish Plot” during the reign of Charles II Stuart of England. This plot was supposedly aiming at a Catholic takeover of England with the help of the Stuarts. Fictitious though this report turned out to be, its political effects were most welcome to the pro-Venetian Whig party of the English aristocracy.

Without intelligence networks interested in promoting Titus Oates’ story, he might have been relegated to total obscurity. Oates was a mythomaniac, recounting wild inventions he knew his listeners wanted to hear, all in a desperate bid to attract attention. But there were powerful political forces who found his hallucinations advantageous.

This reminds us once again, as in the case of Joseph Smith, to always look for the interaction between the individual impostor and the organized networks which constitute and assemble the audience which the impostor so urgently desires. Some key excerpts from Greenacre:

“An impostor is not only a liar, but a very special type of liar who imposes on others fabrications of his attainments, position, or worldly possessions. This he may do through misrepresentations of his official (statistical) identity, by presenting himself with a fictitious name, history, and other items of personal identity, either borrowed from some other actual person or fabricated according to some imaginative conception of himself. There are similar falsifications on that part of his identity belonging to his accomplishments, a plagiarizing on a grand scale, or making claims which are grossly implausible. Imposture appears to contain the hope of getting something material, or some other worldly advantage. While the reverse certainly exists among the distinguished, wealthy, and competent persons who lose themselves in cloaks of obscurity and assumed mediocrity, these come less frequently into sharp focus in the public eye. One suspects, however, that some “hysterical” amnesia is, and dual or multiple personalities are conditions related to imposturous characters. The contrast between the original and the assumed identities may sometimes be not so great in the matter of worldly position, and consequently does not lend itself so readily to the superficial explanation that it has been achieved for direct and material gain. The investigation of even a few instances of imposture – if one has not become emotionally involved in the deception – is sufficient to show how crude though clever many impostors are, how very faulty any scheming is, and how often, in fact, the element of shrewdness is lacking. Rather a quality of showmanship is involved, with its reliance all on the response of an audience to illusions. “In some of the most celebrated instances of imposture, it indeed appears that the fraud was successful only because many others as well as the perpetrator had a hunger to believe in the fraud, and that any success of such fraudulence depended in fact on strong social as well as individual factors and especial receptivity to the trickery. To this extent those on whom the fraudulence is imposed are not only victims but unconscious conspirators. Its success too is partly a matter of timing. Such combinations of imposturous talent and a peculiar susceptibility of the times to believe in the swindler, who presents the deceptive means of salvation, may account for the great impostures of history. There are, however, instances of the repeated perpetration of frauds under circumstances which give evidence of aprecise content that may seem independent of social factors…. “It is the extraordinary and continued pressure in the impostor to live out his fantasy that demands explanation, a living out which has the force of a delusion, (and in the psychotic may actually appear in that form), but it is ordinarily associated with the ‘formal’ awareness that the claims are false. The sense of reality is characterized by a peculiarly sharp, quick perceptiveness, extraordinarily immediate keenness and responsiveness, especially in the area of the imposture. The over-all utility of the sense of reality is, however, impaired. What is striking in many impostors is that, although they are quick to pick up details and nuances in the lives and activities of those whom they simulate and can sometimes utilize these with great adroitness, they are frequently so utterly obtuse to many ordinary considerations of fact that they give the impression of mere brazenness or stupidity in many aspects of their life peripheral to their impostures…. “The impostor has, then, a specially sharpened sensitivity within the area of his fraud, and identity toward the assumption of which he has a powerful unconscious pressure, beside which his conscious wish, although recognizable, is relatively slight. The unconscious drive heightens his perceptions in a focused area and permits him to ignore or deny other elements of reality which would ordinarily be considered matters of common sense. It is this discrepancy in abilities which makes some impostors such puzzling individuals. Skill and persuasiveness are combined with utter foolishness and stupidity. “In well-structured impostures this may be described as a struggle between two dominant identities in the individual: the temporarily focused and strongly assertive imposturous one, and the frequently amazingly crude and poorly knit one from which the impostor has emerged. In some instances, however, it is also probable that the imposture cannot be sustained unless there is emotional support from someone who especially believes in and nourishes it. The need for self-betrayal may then he one part of the tendency to revert to a less demanding, more easily sustainable personality, particularly if support is withdrawn. “The impostor seems to flourish on the success of his exhibitionism. Enjoyment of the limelight and inner triumph of ‘putting something over’ seems inherent, and bespeak the closeness of imposture to voyeurism. Both aspects are represented: pleasure in watching while the voyeur himself is invisible; exultation in being admired and observed as a spectacle. It seems as if the impostor becomes temporarily convinced of the rightness of his assumed character in proportion to the amount of attention he is able to gain from it. “In the lives of impostors there are circumscribed areas of reaction which approach the delusional. These are clung to when the other elements of the imposture have been relinquished…. “Once an imposturous goal has been glimpsed, the individual seems to behave without need for consistency, but to strive rather for the supremacy of the gains from what can be acted out with sufficient immediate gratification to convince others. For the typical impostor, an audience is absolutely essential. It is from the confirming reaction of his audience that the impostor gets a ‘realistic’ sense of self, a value greater than anything he can otherwise achieve. It is the demand for an audience in which the (false) self is reflected that causes impostures often to become of social significance. Both reality and identity seem to the impostor to be strengthened rather than diminished by the success of the fraudulence of his claims…. “The impostor seems to be repeatedly seeking confirmation of his assumed identity to overcome his sense of helplessness or incompleteness. It is my impression that this is the secret of his appeal to others, and that often especially conscientious people are ‘taken in’ and other impostors as well attracted because of the longing to return to that happy state of omnipotence which adults have had to relinquish….

John Miller. Can you sort of -- I guess we’re going to try and put a story together and we have a deadline of today because our magazine closed, well, basically yesterday but we’ll probably get something together – you know, it’s been on the cover both here and the Post.

John Miller:

Yeah, I saw that.

Interviewer:

What kind of comment is coming from, you know, your agency or from Donald?

John Miller:

Well, it just that he really decided that he wasn’t, you know, he didn’t want to make any commitment. He didn’t want to make a commitment. He really thought it was too soon. He’s coming out of a marriage, and he’s starting to do tremendously well financially. As you saw, he got his licenses five to nothing the other day and totally unanimous. And he’s really been working hard and doing well. And probably, as you know, there’s a real estate depression in the United States and he’s probably doing as well as anybody there is. And frankly, he wants to keep it that way. And he just thought it was too soon to make any commitment to anybody.

Interviewer:

So what is going to happen when -- is she being asked to leave

or is she going to be allowed to stay?

John Miller:

Well, he treats everybody well. You know, you don’t know him, but he’s a -

Interviewer:

No, I have met him.

John Miller:

Have you met him? He’s a good guy and he’s not going to hurt anybody. The one article said he was going to throw her out of the apartment is total nonsense. He is going to always treat her well as he treated his wife well. I mean, he paid his wife a great deal of money. He did it in a very bad period of time and, ultimately, that was settled. There were those that say that that was even put that way. I don’t know if you heard that but that Trump became poor until he got his divorce. And then all of a sudden, he’s been doing very well and I guess you probably heard that, too.

But he treated his wife well and he treated -- and he will treat Marla well. He’s somebody that has a lot of options, and, frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women.

Interviewer:

Like who?

John Miller:

Well, he gets called by a lot of people.

Interviewer:

Yeah. Well, what about -- this Carla Bruni, I mean, how important is she right now? Is she [cross-talking]?

John Miller:

I think it’s somebody that -- you know, she’s beautiful. I saw her once quickly and she’s beautiful and all, but I think that he’s got a whole open field really. A lot of the people that you write about, and you people do a great job, by the way, but a lot of the people that you write about really are -- I mean, they call. They just call. Actresses, people that you write about just call to see if they can go out with him and things.

Interviewer:

You can’t say, like, did Madonna ever really call?

John Miller:

He was so set up with that. You know, Madonna called and what happened -- I mean, I don’t know if you want to listen to this.

Interviewer:

No, I do.

John Miller:

Do you? Do you have a second?

Interviewer:

Yeah, obviously.

John Miller:

What happened is it was a benefit at the Plaza Hotel which he owned for Vreeland, Diana Vrelland, or no, for Martha Graham. It was a ball benefit for Martha actually just before she passed away. And Madonna was there and she came in a beautiful evening gown and combat boots. She was wearing combat boots, and Trump was asked to go over to meet her. And he was there just for a little while to say hello and to make a speech and make like an introductory speech.

Madonna was in the room, and so somebody from Madonna’s entourage, because she comes in with an entourage of dancers and everything else, and somebody from Madonna’s entourage came over and said, “Would you go over and say hello to Madonna?” And so he went over and said hello to Madonna and he gave his autograph to the dancers. She said, “These are fans” and all this. “Will you give them the autograph?” So he said, “Best wishes” or something. And then all of a sudden -- and that was the end. And then he said goodbye to her and that was literally the end. He’s got zero interest in Madonna. It was literally the end.

And the next day in the newspapers, they had a story that he wanted to go out with her and everything else. Besides that, that she was sitting there with her boyfriend. I think his name was Ward or something -

Interviewer:

Yeah, Tony Ward.

John Miller:

-- and she was sitting there right with her boyfriend. So, I mean, it wouldn’t be appropriate.

Then the next day, there was a story that Trump went to [inaudible] and Madonna was supposedly at [inaudible], and that was another total nonsense. So, somehow, there was a thing. And then she called recently about this fight and wanted to go out. You know, she’s got this PR machine that I guess you people play to very well but it really was nonsense. So, anyway.

Interviewer:

I don’t think we ever reported that about Madonna and Donald.

John Miller:

Well, she called and wanted to go out with him, that I can tell you. And one of the other people that you’re writing about -- by the way, I’m sort of new here.

Interviewer:

What is your position there? John Miller: Well, I’m sort of handling PR because he gets so much of it.

And frankly, I mean, I could tell you off the record. Until I get to know you, off the record, I can tell you that he didn’t care if he got bad PR until he got his divorce finished.

So when he got a lot of bad financial stuff, he liked it because, you know, it was good because he could get a divorce finished. And once his divorce is finished, if you noticed since then he’s doing well financially and he’s doing well in every other way. The licensing was five to nothing. And people are saying how come all of a sudden he’s doing so well? And then I guess Newsday about two weeks ago did a story on that. So I’ve sort of been put in here to handle because I’ve never seen anybody get so many calls from the press.

Interviewer:

Where did you come from?

John Miller:

I basically worked for different firms. I worked for a couple of different firms, and I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes. So I’m going to do this a little part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life, too.

Interviewer:

Is he trying to -- I mean, is Marla trying to reconcile all this or is this -

John Miller:

Marla wants to be back with him and he wants to be with her, but he just, he just feels it’s too soon.

Interviewer:

What about the ring?

John Miller:

Well, it was never an engagement ring, because that was my first question. It was never an engagement ring. It was a ring -- I mean, he wouldn’t buy the engagement ring. Actually, he bought the ring at the Taj Mahal at Tiffany’s. The only place that Tiffany’s has that, you know, in a hotel is because of his relationship with Tiffany being the neighbor next door to Trump Tower and Tiffany decided to open up a store at the Taj Mahal. And this was a way of giving Tiffany some business in addition to getting Ivan -- geting Marla something that would be nice.

So he did that, and as I told him and other people told him, when you want to buy a present, don’t make it a ring the next time. It was a little confusing.

Interviewer:

Make it a chain.

John Miller:

Make it anything. Anything but a ring, I guess.

Interviewer:

Do you think there’s any fear that Marla will spill everything at all or -- ?

John Miller:

It doesn’t matter to him. He truly doesn’t care. I’ve never seen somebody that’s so immune, that he gets immune to, you know, some people would say you got bad press three or four months ago. Now, he’s starting to get good press where I don’t know what you call this but this is a big press.

But I’ve never seen somebody so immune to -- he actually thrived on the bad press initially. And once the divorce was over, he said, “We have to change this” and it’s very interesting. Frankly, if he got good press during the divorce, he’d be in court right now because she settled because she thought that she better believe the press and she settled. And now, he’s doing great and now she would like not to settle.

Ivana, when she didn’t settle, she made a huge mistake and she’s now had a huge fight with her lawyer, Michael Kennedy, over why they made the settlement. And it’s over. He sort of laughs at everything.

Interviewer:

How does Donald feel about Ivana’s [indiscernible] with Barbara Walters?

John Miller:

Well, it was a total violation of -- I mean, I could tell you -

Interviewer: Yeah. But then, that was -- I mean, did the judge, Phyllis What’s-Her-Name?

John Miller:

Gangel-Jacob, yeah, but that’s going to be -- the judge felt that when Donald got Ivana to sign that agreement, that Donald got Ivana to void her rights and that the judge was wrong because there’s so much case law on that. And what happened is the judge said -- by the way, she can take that clause out. She just said she’s not going to hold Ivana in contempt. In other words, if somebody -- if she violates and she’s not going to put Ivana in jail for violating. Okay? So she didn’t void that clause.

Now, Donald’s got a decision as to whether or not he wants to pay her any more money because by violating that clause, he in theory doesn’t have to pay her any money.

Interviewer:

Being the good guy that he’s trying to be -- I mean -

John Miller:

I’m not sure what he’s going to do. Again, you could say that she shouldn’t have done that either. I mean, you sign an agreement, you go through months and months, and she can’t say she didn’t know this one. And what he did was smart because he got not only Ivana to sign the agreement, but he got Ivana’s lawyers to sign the agreement that she’d do it, that she speaks English perfectly, that everything in the agreement is known and studied and everything else.

So, in theory, I think he could probably -- you know, I think that could have cost her many millions of dollars. I don’t know that he’s going to enforce it or not.

Interviewer:

What about that whole thing that was brought up in the news whether Marla wouldn’t sign any sort of prenuptial? Did that have anything to do with the ending of the relationship?

John Miller:

No, no.

Interviewer:

Was that true? I mean, was he trying to get her to sign anything?

John Miller: Well, I can tell you this. Just off the record, there’s no way he gets married without a prenuptial agreement. You understand that. It was painful but worked in the Ivana case because, you know, while it was challenged, it still ended up being upheld and worked. And frankly, she got not exactly one penny, she didn’t get one penny more than what the agreement called for. So that’s that. And she spent a lot of money on lawyers and a lot of money on everything and that was the year of the circus, but they do stand up.

I can tell you there was never any talk of marriage from Donald’s point of view. I can also say that Marla would’ve liked to get married, obviously, but it was just something he didn’t want to do. It’s just too soon. And, you know, hopefully, he’ll maintain a good relationship with Marla. [Indiscernible] but it’s just too soon.

Interviewer: What about this Ivana thing? It says in the Newsday Trump also told friends that when he and Ivana met last week, she indicated that she would be interested in reconciliation?

John Miller:

Ivana wants to get back with Donald, but she -

Interviewer:

Really? After saying on Barbara Walters that she never would?

John Miller:

What is she going to say? What is she going to say? She’s going to say when he’s with somebody else and had other people lined up, is she going to say, “Yes, I want to get back. I want to get back.” You know, she’s a pretty savvy woman and she’s not going to say -- I mean, he’s living with Marla and he’s got three other girlfriends, and then, and she’s not going to say, I really want to get back, you know? She wants to get back, she’s told it to a lot of her friends and she’s told it to him, but it’s so highly unlikely. That’s off the record. He left. I mean, it was his choice to leave and he left.

Interviewer:

He left for Marla.

John Miller:

No, he didn’t leave, no. See, that’s the biggest misconception of this whole thing. The second question I asked about after the ring was the biggest misconception is he left. He didn’t leave for Marla. He really left for himself. He didn’t leave for Marla. He never left for Marla. He was going to leave anyway. Marla was there, but he was going to leave anyway. Whether there was a Marla or not he was going to leave anyway.

So now he has somebody else named Carla who is beautiful and I guess you have something on her. I don’t know if you do or not.

Interviewer:

No, they won’t talk about her. He didn’t say anything about her. I mean, she’s a daughter of who -

John Miller:

Well, she’s a very successful model, etc., etc. But again, he didn’t leave Marla for her. He just wants [indiscernible], he does things for himself. He leaves for himself, he does things for himself. He, when he makes the decision, that will be a very lucky woman. But he’s not going to do that until he makes the decision. You know, when he makes the decision, he’s very capable of a total commitment when he makes the decision. But he felt it’s too soon. Off the record, he probably felt Marla wasn’t the right one, or whatever, but he just felt it was too soon.

Interviewer:

How did he meet Carla?

John Miller:

At the Plaza Hotel, she was doing a Carolina Herrera fashion show.

Interviewer:

Was Ivana there, do you think? Does she go to fashion shows?

John Miller:

Well she goes to them, but less so since, you know, since -

Interviewer:

When did he meet Carla there?

John Miller:

Probably a few months ago.

Interviewer:

Uh-huh. Have they been able to see each other?

John Miller:

Well, not really. And again, I heard with Carla -- I mean, I’ll give you -- this is getting to be -- this is a little different from what I normally discuss. This is I think an interesting point. Carla is a very beautiful girl from Italy whose father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe.

Interviewer:

Who is he? What’s the name of her father?

John Miller:

Her father’s name is -- her name is Carla Bruni Tedeschi.

Interviewer:

How do you spell that?

John Miller:

I don’t know. She doesn’t use the last name because it’s too complicated, you know [indiscernible]. But anyway, but her father is one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Carla is extraordinarily beautiful and didn’t want to be a model except that every time she’d go to a show, [indiscernible] to look, Ralph Lauren and various people would say, Carla, you have to be on the show, etc., etc. So she does all of the top shows and she’s always very busy and very successful, etc., etc. She was having a big thing with Mick Jagger. Did you hear about this?

Interviewer:

Well, I’ve just been reading about it.

John Miller:

What happened is she was going with Eric Clapton.

Interviewer:

Mick Jagger, who was married at that point?

John Miller:

Mick Jagger, as of three months ago she was having a big thing. [indiscernible] What she - Just doesn’t want to be in the limelight. What she was having a very big thing with Mick Jagger. And then what happened, she was going with Eric Clapton, and Eric Clapton introduced her to Mick Jagger, and then Mick Jagger started calling her, and she ended up going with Mick Jagger. And then she dropped Mick Jagger for Donald, and that’s where it is right now. And again, he’s not making any commitments to Carla either just so you understand. Interviewer: What kinds of things have they done? I mean, do they go out? [Indiscernible]

John Miller:

Well, they just get along very good and she’s very pretty and all of that stuff. But, you know, he doesn’t have any idea who she is, right? When he meets the right woman, it’s going to be a great relationship and it’s going to be a very, you know, because he believes strongly in the marriage concept. In all fairness, he was married for 12 years and he was happily married for 12, you know, for many of those years, I guess, and he believes in it, especially in this society today, I can tell you. But he believes in it.

Interviewer:

Where is he living now? I mean is he -

John Miller:

He lives in Trump Tower. He has the apartment at the top of Trump Tower. Interviewer: Okay. And Ivana also has an apartment at Trump Tower? John Miller: She has an apartment at Trump Tower, but the court order is that she has to leave within a period of less than a year.

Interviewer:

Yeah. Right. Okay. Listen, can I -

[ End of file] [End of transcript] [End of file] [End of transcript]

“More than a medical scientific problem, AIDS is a sociopolitical IMPOSITION.” "

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

If, like me, the recognition of what has just fluttered past Zooey DeChanelle's big, moony eyes as it moved across the screen as a teaching section of Prince's crash-course training montage of how to love, how to be loved and how to be love, if that tripped any of your alarm warnings, red flags and early warning systems in your thinking, then YOU ARE UNDER OCCUPATION, whether you are ready or able to admit it to yourself or not.

But so both were Denmark and Iceland, for years last century (by Nazi Germany and the US Military, respectively), and to no real descend able lasting ill effect, once they were able to get to grips with the situation, and that can only come about once they are able to accept that you really do have a problem, then you can get to work on solving it. Don't become unnecessarily alarmed and neurotic and First Worldist about it.

"So here’s my version of what happens :

Doing the comic, I set up these characters – the whole thing was set up as an adventure story, where there are some bad guys who live in another dimension, who want to enslave us all. And there’s some good guys who live in another dimension, who want us all to have a good time. In the middle, there is us. And we are obviously trying to have a good time; everybody wants to have a good time, y’know? Hitler wanted to have a good time. And, uh..

We all want to have a good time. So we’ve got to understand that, as a starter.

The more I set up these dualities – the more I set these people against the opposition – the more it started to seem like a complete crock, and that we’ve been sold this nonsense of opposition. And I began to find that the closer I got to the end of the series, the whole ‘opposition’ element of it was the least meaningful, least important part of it. And that we’ve actually been deluding ourselves in a lot of ways.

Beyond that, I found we’ve actually been deluding ourselves in the worst way of all by believing in the individual.

Stay with me on this.

Kafka, Orwell, Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner.. everyone told us The Individual was the most important thing we could be.

Everyone is fucking ‘quirky’ these days; every shit in their window of MTV is ‘quirky’. Everyone’s cool; everyone’s smart… it’s not true.

What if the individual was the fake? What if the individual’s the crock? And we’ve actually been sold that by “them”; by the man, the establishment.. whatever you want.

Because what occurred to me is that when you talk about the individual, and you deal with the individual, you find that the end of the individual is neurosis. To be individual means that there is “self” and “not self”. Okay?

So where I stop.. the boundaries of “me”, right, this physical body; the boundaries of me that stretch out.. things I believe in.. I’m sure we’d all be friends if we talked – but would we be friends with Newt Gingrich? No.

But that’s the point: I stop, where Newt Gingrich starts. Why is that? Why do I stop there? Why does *he* define my self-sense? And I can’t absorb him?

Why do these fuckers.. why does the Skull And Bones Society, or the CIA.. why do the 33º Masons – why are they different from us?

They’re not – they want to explain things. They want an answer. They’ve found an answer that seems to suit them – which seems kind of uncool and cruel to me, because it involves exploiting other people. But they’re looking for an answer.

We’re all looking for the same thing:

Why.

Are.

We.

Here?

Why *are* we here? What are you doing here today? What do you expect? What do you expect to take home with you?

Can anyone answer? Can one person tell me what you expect to take home from all of this? Come on, put your hand up.

Yeah?

["Experience!"]

Exactly. Because that is all we have. And that is all I can offer you, is experience. Of having done this shit, tested it, put it in the crucible to see what happens – and it works.

So I began to think more and more about the individual, and I looked into what that actually meant. And what it was, was a structure that was pretty much created… the ego structure was created out of what Julian Jaynes calls the “bicameral mind” becoming one mind.

And apparently – according to him – he says that back in the old days of the Greeks, and the earliest writing of the world, people didn’t have self-consciousness in the way that we have. They didn’t have egos. They didn’t understand themselves as “I” in the same way that we do. Because the corpus callosum – that connects the two hemispheres of the brain – wasn’t connected.

So if you heard a voice, that voice was God.

And Homer, and all those guys, you’ve got plenty of examples of people hearing the voice of God, and acting on that. Alexander constantly acted on the voice of God.

Julian Jaynes suggests that it wasn’t the voice of God – it was the voice of the left hemisphere of the brain communicating with the right hemisphere of the brain, interpreted as a god.

So okay: now we’ve got the two things joined together. We’ve got this beautiful bridge in the middle that links the two. But we have the ego structure – which was created when those things linked.

Suddenly we’re like:

“Oh fuck.

I am I.

I am the I Am.

This is my.. my god is this.

I am separate; I am one.”

We made this idea that we’re somehow separated from nature.

No we’re not.

Bullshit!

Again, I read New Scientist last month, right – and they’re talking about nature: “We must control nature; we must do this. How do we deal with our relationship with nature?”

We *are* fucking nature!

There’s nothing on this planet that is not “nature”.

Power stations are nature;

atom bombs are nature.

Because nature made us to make those things.

Either you trust nature,

or you don’t trust nature –

and I trust nature.

So we have to ask:

what is nature getting at here?

If we ignore this crap that we’re somehow isolated from nature; that we somehow have to tame nature… nature knows exactly what it’s doing.

The planet is not in danger.

We are.

The planet’ll survive.

The planet’s been through, like, ammonia atmospheres and impossible-to-live-on, and everything dead – and it gets its way back out of it.

We’re in danger. Or so we think, because our hubris tells us that we are in danger.

Our hubris tells us that we’re about to destroy the world; we’re gonna destroy the planet;

we’ll fuck the atmosphere.

No. We’ll fuck *our* atmosphere.

But some trilobites’ll come along and live in anything we create.

So that is not the problem.

The problem is we’re standing here at the 21st century, stuck with individuality.

Because we’ve believed in it so much; it *seemed* so important that we should all be distinct.

What happens if we stop being distinct?

And what happens if we think about individuality as something that was actually just scaffolding for where we are now?

So if you create a skyscraper, you put up your scaffolding, you build the building – and what’s happened here is that we’ve overlooked the building, and focussed on the scaffolding.

Y’know – why aren’t we taking the scaffolding down?

Let’s do it today: take the scaffolding down.

Because the individual was a way to get us to this point.

And what I really think.. and basically why I’m here is to try and punt this notion.

After doing this comic book for six years; after thinking about this stuff for six years; after proving that it works for six years, I’m left with this notion: we’ve been fooled, and we’ve fooled ourselves, and we continue to fool ourselves – and, like Doug said: there is no “us” and no “them” – there’s just us. And somehow we’re trying to make this thing work. And it *does* work.

Say, for instance… most of us here are mostly pretty counter-culture types – y’know, we like our drugs, we like this and that; we like breaking a few rules. But we don’t like the police, in general.

Who here loves the police? Hands up.

Nice one! Coz I’m gonna teach you to love the police.

Why do we hate the police? If we want to change things – everyone in here, let’s go down to the local precinct and join up. Are we gonna do it? Who here’s gonna do it with me? Coz I’m not gonna do it..

And why? *Why* are we not doing that?

["Coz they're dumb!"]

Right. So we’re hating these guys who’ve taken on this thing… we’ve chosen the biggest lunkheads in society to protect ourselves from the fuckers in Rikers Island! Because we are scared of them! Y’know, we are scared of them. We are middle-class, libertarian liberals who are shit-scared of being raped in prison.

So we create the police. And we get these lunkheads… who will obey what we tell them do to. They’ll actually obey us; those fuckers will do what we tell them. And we say to them: “Protect us from those real fuckers; those bikers, and those black guys, and all those awful guys who are gonna come and fuck us up and kill us and steal all our stuff.”

We put the police there. Right? We put them there. And we don’t want to go there, because we are smart people; we are cool people. We don’t want to go and hit anyone. We don’t want to go and enforce the law – because we don’t really believe in it. But we know some poor bastard has to enforce it.

Why do we hate those guys when we put them there?

Why do we hate ourselves for creating this society?

Why are so many people in America obsessed with Marilyn Manson; corpses; dead people; misery; John Wayne Gacy… John Wayne Gacy’s a fucking prick. Y’know, he killed a few people and did some shitty paintings. What’s that? Why should we be engaged with that? And yet that has become.. what, “apocalypse culture“?

Where do we go from there, that isn’t that? Where do we go that isn’t playing with our own shite?

The Answer… back to the individual.

If the individual doesn’t work – if Patrick McGoohan was wrong; Number 6 was wrong to stand on that beach screaming “I am not a number, I am a free man!” – what do we have left?

Because ultimately the guy who’s not a number and not a free man experiences neurosis, the longer he goes down that path. I’m sure there’s a bunch of people here, like me, who eventually… you’ve worked your way through this stuff; you’ve read the books, you’ve done this shit; you’ve taken the drugs; you’ve been there, you’ve seen it. We’ve all experienced enlightenment in little bits. You know it’s out there; you know this stuff is true: the consensus doesn’t explain our lives. But what does?

Imagine getting rid of the individual. Imagine getting rid of that scaffolding. What do we have left? And here’s what I’m about to offer:

The more I looked into it, the more I began to see that we have these mutants living among us, right now. The people from the 21st century; from the end of the 21st century are here. But there is no context for them. In the same way that – y’know, if you lived in… Tunguska two hundred years ago, and you were an epileptic, you would be a shaman. There was a context for you. In this society, you’re an epileptic. It’s quite simple; it’s a disease, and nothing you say is of any worth because it’s considered pathology.

If, on the other hand, you look at these people, who are the mutants… and what do they call it? Multiple Personality Disorder.

This is what lies beyond the personality; the “I”; the bullshit.

Because if you take “I” to the limit – and like I said, I’m sure a lot of us here have done this – it becomes… all that happens is that self questions self. Endlessly; repetitively. “Am I doing this right? Is this the right way? Should I think about these people like this? Should I approach them this way; should I involve them this way?” Self questions self, endlessly, and it reaches a peak… it goes nowhere.

On the national scale, that same thing – self questions self; self encounters not-self; equals borders, war, destruction.. that’s where it goes. That’s where it ends. That thing ends in disaster.

It ends in neurosis on a personal level. And it ends in war on the national level.

So I began to think: “What could we replace that with?” And I was looking at these poor MPD fuckers. And I realised they just don’t have a context.

What would happen if we decided to abandon the personality, and replace it with a multiple personality complex? Because as we all know – everyone in here, I’m sure.. I mean, I feel as if I can say this for certain, knowing human beings as they are: sometimes you do things that you don’t want to do. Sometimes you do things that are contradictory to what you think. Sometimes you fuck yourself up.

Why? Because there’s not one person in here; there’s hundreds.

And if you start giving them names, and you start shuffling them about; if you start playing with them, you become a bigger human being. Because you’ve no longer allowed yourself to stop at your boundaries.

Imagine the personality as… let’s choose Windows, even though that’s a contentious one.

Imagine the personality as Windows. Instead of the personality.. there’s so many people, I’m sure you’ve met them.. you talk to them, and they say “No, this is the way I am. I’ve worked on this. This is me. And I won’t change. And you’ll just have to work with that. This is me; this is important; this is what I’ve come to, and this is what I’ve Made Of Myself.”

Bullshit. It’s a trap. They don’t go anywhere; they’re stuck there.

What if those same people were then given Personality 2000? Which is an upgrade, and an add-on? And here’s a bit of your personality that likes hip hop? Here’s a bit to your personality that likes ballet? And because we’ve all got them. And we’ve got the fucker.. we’ve got the serial killer inside; we’ve got the wonderful new-age bastard… we’ve got whatever we like. We’ve got James Bond in there. We’ve got Pussy Galore in there. They’re all there.

So what I’m suggesting is that we start working with that. Abandon the personality; abandon the individual; abandon the “I” because it’s a lie, and it has held us down; it’s been like a weight round our necks. It was useful for the last two thousand years of history, because it created this out of the chaos that was – and this is more coherent; more useful; more meaningful. It has its problems; everything does; every system has – but we’re getting better.

And I think what we should do is walk away from the crap of the 21st century, and start thinking about what we’ve been experiencing.

My feeling about the 20th century, and about World War II and about Auschwitz and all of that stuff is that we had to go through it. We had to do it. That was humanity’s dark night of the soul, and it will never, ever happen again. But it had to happen.

Every single nightmare image, every image of hell that we have in our minds happened.

Everything you can think of; people were flayed, brutalised, gassed, tortured, cut into pieces, turned into pigs – everything you can imagine happened. The world was a wasteland. There were cities completely annihilated. We went through it.

Why did we do that?

Stanislav Grof has a conception of the ‘perinatal matrices‘, which was one of the big influences on the film The Matrix. You might recognise some of this. He says that things that happen to us around birth are really profound, and they have all kinds of weird effects. They effect society, they effect the self; they effect everything. They have reverberations.

And he claims that there are several states, that he calls “Basic Perinatal Matrices”.

The first state is oceanic bliss – which we’re all familiar with, I’m sure. Oceanic fuckin’ bliss, mate. And that is the state of the baby in the womb, untouched – everything is provided for; everthing is there; everything you need will turn up out of the blue.

Basic Perinatal Matrix 2 is a different thing. It’s when the womb starts to turn a little toxic, and begins to suggest we’re about to be expelled. And, y’know, we don’t remember this stuff – what happened? What was the feeling of that fetus in there who suddenly thinks: “My entire universe has been overturned and I’m about to be shit out”? Does he know where he’s going? “What the fuck’s this? Y’know, I was happy there. It was cool; I was getting everything I wanted.”

And so on into BPM 4 – which is kind of a release from tension; which is the birth process.

So I’m beginning to think.. as a society – and returning to the idea of ontogeny as history.. phylogeny, or whatever the fuck the word is.. what we’re looking at now is humanity’s process through Grofian matrices.

And what we went through is actually a Stanislav Grof Basic Perinatal Matrix 3 experience.

Every image that he talks about: death camps, control, the idea of people.. babies trapped in tubes.. you’ll recognise all this from The Matrix, as I said.

What if this little baby that is the universe; this little larvae that’s approaching culmination, has had to go through these stages? Because everything does. If you want to get rid of war, how do you get rid of war? You inoculate yourself against war by having the worst fuckin’ war you’ve ever had in your life. And everything after that’s just an aftershock. We’ve done nothing worse than what we did in those few years. Humanity’s never come close to anything like it. We’ve tried; there’s been a few lunatics who’ve tried. But nothing on that scale.

So what if we choose to imagine that humanity has passed through that stage?

We’ve reached the 21st century, and we’re now approaching Basic Perinatal Matrix 4. Which is: victory after war. Which is: the struggle is over. Which is: we’re all here; what do we do next?

There was no apocalypse; there was no Christ. There was no rapture. There is nothing. All this stuff is shit.

There is only us. And we’ve still got another thousand years, and maybe another thousand beyond that, and maybe another twenty thousand beyond that.

What are we gonna do?

Who are we?

Are we gonna stick to these personalities; these bounded, territorial things?

Are we gonna expand ourselves; make ourselves bigger? So that if you happen to like.. [say] ‘world music’ and I don’t, I can tap into your love of ‘world music’, and experience it – and it means something.

So all I’m suggesting here is that we all take up magic. Because basically it works. We can change the world. It’s quite simple; the technology’s there. The Buddhists have been telling us.. as I said, people have been telling us this for so long. And in the last two hundred years, it’s been driven underground and we’ve forgotten.

And people like us are here today to try and recover something of that. And the way to recover it, is to do it. Do the techniques. Go buy an Aleister Crowley book; [or] buy one by Phil Hine or Peter Carroll that’s a bit more up to date, and you don’t have to bother with that 18th century fucking language. But do the shit, and you will find it works.

And we stand here now. This is the counterculture. We are the counterculture.. this is like, this shit. I went to this thing in, like, 1987 and it was Robert Anton Wilson and the whole deal – and I remember sitting in the audience thinking “fuck, rave is dead”. Because it was that kind of thing; that version of it’s dead. The hippy version of it’s dead.

We stand here. And we’re looking ahead. What are we gonna do?

Abandon the personality is what I suggest.

Get rid of the sense of self. Get rid of the sense of “I”, and make yourself something bigger.

Imagine that every time you want to learn something new, it’s a new computer program; you can buy the operating system; the update. You can learn to fly a plane in seven days according to Neuro-Linguistic Programming – so why not? Let’s do it.

Do we want to change things? Or are we just sitting here talking?

No answer.

Are we talking at all? Do we want to change things? Yeah! Right – that’s why we’re fucking here, man. That is why we’re here!

So what are we gonna do?

If you want to change things, the first thing you have to change is yourself.

Because if you don’t change yourself, you will take on the world as if it is yourself – and fuck up. You will really fuck up, because you don’t understand your own dark side. If you don’t understand your own weird, shitty side.. if you don’t understand the fact that there’s someone in there who will kill your mother, if need be – if you can’t take that on; if you can’t take that on board and realise that Charles Manson and me and you are not much different; that John Wayne Gacy and me and you are not much different – except that he did it. Y’know, there’s those days when I’m gonna kill that motherfucker over there – but we don’t do it.

But it’s in us, and it’s there. And so much of this is denial. That we have no dark side. You know: the hippies, and those lovely people in the rave era who were all on ecstasy – they tried to pretend we have no dark side. And what happened was they got fucked up by their own dark side. As will always happen.

So let’s kiss our dark sides; let’s fuck our dark sides. Get him down there where he belongs. And he can tell us stuff. Y’know, that thing’s useful.

But above all: let’s become plex-creatures. Complex, superplex – be able to take on new personality traits; able to take on new ideas; able to adapt; able to extend our boundaries into what was previously the ‘enemy territory’ – until the point where we become what was once our enemy, and they are us, and there is no distinction."